Riding In Kampar, In The Name Of Unity

Projek57 Malaysia11 Aug 2017

Our Unity Ride cycling team is heading north to Kampar. Kampar has a long history and its one of the town which is rich in tin. The journey started off perfectly with a sunny morning. Even Collin was busy applying sunblock ;-)

The route to UTAR Campus was filled with luscious greeneries, passing by the legendary Batu Gajah, Ipoh and Tanjung Tualang. Malaysia is fortunate enough that we still have a vast forest and jungle. The entire Projek57 team made sure we keep Mother Nature cleans by not disposing of rubbish throughout our journey.

Along the way, our team has met with many wonderful faces of Malaysians from these smaller towns and kampungs. Collin, Sadiq and the cycling team found a small signless, red zinc roof with green walls warung, sat down for a chit-chat with the pakcik and his family. Encik Abdul Rahim, 56 is the owner and he describes his life in the kampung, nyaman (It's peaceful) to Collin and Sadiq.

As the team continued their journey, they've got a surprise by bumping into a group of soldiers. A rare opportunity, but a great memory for everyone! These are the men and women who will sacrifice themselves to protect us! The picture below shows what Unity is without words!

Half way through the journey, one of our cyclists was injured. Will he be able to complete the journey? And, of course, he did! Our team reached UTAR Campus with great spirit, especially our injured cyclist. He was so determined and motivated to complete Unity Ride 2nd leg.

One of Projek57 Unity Ride objective is to engage with the youths. In UTAR, we collaborated with Leaderonomics for a dialogue session. The session was moderated by a leadership training consultant from Leaderonomics. The panellists for the dialogue sessions are:

Collin Swee and Syed Sadiq, co-founders of projek57.

Zakri Khir, CEO of Allianz Malaysia.

Christopher Wong, Lawyer – Heritage Advocate and COO of Malaysia Book of Records.

Around 300 students and a few of Allianz Malaysia staff attended the dialogue session. It was a very interesting session as the students get to learn tips from the panellist during the discussion.

Encik Khir shared with the students, 'My ancestors came to this country in the 18th Century. We are all 'pendatangs'. The only Bumiputeras are the 2 Orang Asli girls (Projek57 interns) sitting over there."

Collin Swee:
"Malaysians tend to look at different races. We can be serious and we can joke about it the next second. We are united when it comes to adversities. Malaysia is about helping each other. My motor broke down and an Indian guy offered me a ride."

Mr Christopher Wong:
" Everyone can be a role model. Most of us are a role model in our own certain way. An act of kindness or something that you do from the bottom of your heart. I've come across many people and everyone plays a part of being a specific role model if we do it sincerely"

A lady lecturer from UTAR:
"The educators are the role models. They are not only knowledge generators they also widen the students' horizon. They shape the destiny of the students. Through Malaysian studies after the end of the class, they will know more about the cultural differences."

Sadiq:
“We lost our sense of humour, we are very sensitive nowadays. I and my coach used to train; he would be shouting at us "Eh, Melayu! Kick the ball!" "Eh India, Run faster!" There was never an issue. We respected him. You never felt sensitive about it."

The students get to watch Ola Bola, The Movie by Astro Shaw after the dialogue session.

As the session ended, we are very proud of the students from Performing Arts Department who volunteered to assist us in capturing stories from their fellow students, spreading the message of Unity and few worked alongside with our Orang Asli trainees at Projek57 booth.

These hardworking and enthusiastic groups of students are:

Grae Malar.

Keerthana Maran.

Wang Mei Jie.

Lim Yie Ying.

Malaniysamy.

Hera Ahmad Khan.

Ezra Lavanya.

Nurul Yasmin.

Ch’ng Jaee Kheim.

Tiviyan A/L Pannerchelva.

Retisha Kaur.

In the meantime, we would like to share some 'Unity in our eyes' stories from UTAR campus, Kampar.

From left to right: Rooshini, Sharmeen and Trisha, all 18 year-olds.
They shared - We find unity is important in helping us to understand people. It's amazing to see cultures and religion are being upheld but also stripped away when we unite. We're all different, but similar.

2. Rebecca Pang, 23 from Sandakan, Sabah. "As an aspiring actor in Malaysia, getting to know people is very important. We need to see beyond colour and focus on the art. It's amazing how theatre unifies people. My favourite memory of performing is getting to meet people with different cultures and stories and working with them."

3. From left to right: Aina 29, from Perak, Sarah, 32, from Perak, and Badriah, 27, from Kuala Lumpur.
To us, Malaysia is all about diversity, the people from different walks of life, from different races, religion and cultures make Malaysia a very special place to live in. We are very proud to call ourselves Malaysians.